This blogaround brought to you by total exhaustion.
Recommended Reading:
One of the things I regretfully missed, and missed promoting, during this technological morass the past few days was Images in the River: Black Girls Dialogue, the live panel discussion on teaching feminism to black girls. Thankfully, the panel discussion can still be viewed here. Enjoy!
Jessica: The Trans-Vaginal Ultrasounds You Didn't Hear About: Ignoring Anti-Choice Extremism in Texas
Samhita: Tucker Max's Planned Parenthood Publicity Stunt [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of misogyny and the exploitation of female-centered spaces.]
Fannie: Woman Dunks, Some Can't Handle It [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of gender policing and misogyny.]
Brian: On Fatshion and the Privilege of Buying Clothes [Content Note: The post at this link discusses fat prejudice in mass marketed fashion.]
Adrienne: Harvard "Lampoon Indians" vs. Harlem Globetrotters [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of racism.]
Andy: In Letter, 72 House Lawmakers Urge Obama to Sign Executive Order Protecting LGBT People in the Workplace
Living ~400lbs: Americans Are Fatter Than They Think! [Content Note: The post at this link discusses fat hatred.]
Some Trayvon Martin-related recommended reading [content note for violence and racism for all posts in this section]:
Aurin: Trayvon Martin and Walking While Black
Chanel: Trayvon Martin and Prison Abolition
Democracy Now!: "Trayvon Martin Was Ours"–Author Alice Walker on How Killing Is Symptom of Unaddressed Racism
And, in case you missed it, here is my updates post from earlier this week.
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Wednesday Blogaround
Today in Anti-Choice Terrorism
[Content Note: Anti-choice terrorism.]
Over the weekend, an explosive device went off at a Planned Parenthood facility in Grand Chute, Wisconsin. Yesterday, it was reported that a suspect has been identified and jailed for violating terms of his probation.
This is the headline at that link: "Suspect identified in Planned Parenthood bomb incident near Appleton."
"Bomb incident." It's so cute how domestic terrorism against people with uteri and our healthcare providers gets minimized.
Primarily Garbage
Welp, Mitt Romney won big (or, at least, won) in Wisconsin, Maryland, and D.C. last night. He trounced the competition, such as it is, in Maryland, and really did the business in D.C., where Rick Santorum wasn't even on the ballot. (Whoooooooops!) Romney squeaked by Santorum in Wisconsin, 42%-38%, but a win's a win, even when you're such a stinking mess of a candidate that you can barely beat Rick Santorum. So congratulations, Mitt Romney! You are again the least barfiest!
Mitt Romney is definitely the candidate now, despite the fact that there are three nincompoops still trudging along the campaign trail like it's going to lead them anywhere but the presidency of Garbage Town. Even the Democrats are like, "Let's get on with this thing and start defeating Mitt Romney!"
For realsies, can we all just agree that Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee now and get on with our lives already? Does anyone have any objections?
Oh for fuck's sake.
The Pennsylvania primary is later this month (April 24, along with Connecticut, Delaware, New York, and Rhode Island), so Santorum's vowing to soldier on, trying to prove he's the Republicans' man by winning in his home state. Which, of course, makes as much sense as the rest of Rick Santorum's cockamamie ideas. That is to say: None. Electability is not evidenced by winning one's home state. It's winning in the states where no one has a home-team fondness for you. And, yesterday, Santorum proved again he can't do that, except in Southern Republican primaries among the most socially conservative voters in the nation.
So put your finger down and go take a nap, Santorum! Christ!
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney really took the fight to President Obama last night after his big sweep: "President Obama thinks he's doing a good job—I'm not kidding. It's enough to make you think that years of flying around on Air Force One, surrounded by an adoring staff of true believers telling you that you're great and you're doing a great job, it's enough to make you think that you might become a little out of touch."
LOL MITT ROMNEY YOU DID NOT JUST GO THERE! Does he have Manchurian handlers? Are his handlers paid monkeys from a failed carnival? Is there really no one on his campaign who won't give him this very good advice I'm about to give him for free? Mitt Rommey, do not start a debate about who is more out of touch with the average USian, because YOU WILL LOSE THAT FIGHT. And YOU WILL LOSE IT EVERY TIME. And the news of your loss will have to be delivered to you by space pigeon in the ruby rocketship you use to commute between earth and your gold mansion on the moon which has fully eleventy elevators just in its glorious gilded garage.
You are going to have to find SOME OTHER LINE OF ATTACK against President Obama. And since "he's really, really not progressive enough" isn't exactly a winner for you, GOOD LUCK!
You, sir, are going to need it.
In other news, after President Obama quite rightly said that Rep. Paul Ryan's Republican budget was nothing but thinly veiled social Darwinism, ABC News headlined their coverage with: "President Obama Delivers Blistering Partisan Attack on Modern Republican Party." Ha ha yup. Where "blistering partisan attack" equals "correctly observing their budget is total garbage."
Now if you'll excuse me—I have to go deliver a blistering partisan attack on Dudley by observing that he's sorta lazy.
"I'm serious!"—Dudley. (He's not serious.)
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Tuesday Morning Update
8:00am CT: Disqus says the migration is running, but is still not complete. I will keep you posted and share updates as I get them.
I am also aware that many of you are getting unsolicited email notifications from Disqus, multiple times, and that changing your profile settings doesn't work, because every time they try to re-run the migration, it inexplicably seems to subvert individual settings and the emails get sent again.
I am so desperately sorry that's happening. I work very hard to establish and maintain credibility and trustworthiness with this community, and I am mortified and angry that this situation risks undermining that with any of you.
I am also sorry that I'm the one apologizing to you for tech issues over which I have no control. That is not meaningful accountability. Disqus owes you an apology, which I have conveyed to them. I hope they agree.
Until I am assured that the issues regarding personal settings are resolved, I am reluctant to re-open commenting, even though Disqus assures me re-opening commenting will not affect the migration. I'll keep you updated.
Update 1: 8:30am CT: I'm going to go ahead and publish a couple of the things I wrote yesterday below this post. Comments will remain closed.
Update 2: 9:30am CT: I have gotten no updates from Disqus yet this morning. No replies to emails or tweets. I am aware that many of you are now getting email notifications for a third time. I'm so sorry.
Update 3: 10:30am CT: I have just received an update from Disqus. The migration has been paused because of the notification spamming. So now we're back in a holding pattern, while they try to figure out an issue I first brought to their attention yesterday morning.
Update 4: 12:15pm CT: The last I've heard from Disqus was more than an hour ago, telling me they are "waiting on next steps from our engineering team" and "When we have more information about what's happening we will be better able to advise on a timeline."
Disqus is also repeatedly telling me it's okay to open comments again. Except: User settings are not sticking, which means that if anyone uses the @ function which generates email notifications, the mentioned commenter will get an email notification irrespective of whether they've enabled (or want) notifications.
(I would like to think that a polite request of commenters to not use the @ function would circumvent this problem, but if polite requests were universally respected, we wouldn't need a commenting system that allowed moderation and banning for violating commenting guidelines in the first place.)
So: Given that some of you have received dozens of unsolicited emails, three times or more, I do not want to exploit the good will that most of you have extended to me during this debacle by opening up opportunities for even more unsolicited email generated by participation in this community.
Since the only thing that is within my control is whether to open up commenting again, I'm not going to do that until Disqus resolves these problems and personal settings are "sticking" again.
I would love nothing more to be able to open commenting again at Shakesville. But on behalf of the commenters who have been inundated with email from Disqus and are rightfully pissed off, I will not until we have resolution on this issue.
Update 5: 2:15pm CT: Still no ETA on when these issues might be resolved.
Disqus says they are working on it and have told me again that re-opening comments is an option. I want to be clear that they have said comments can be re-opened.
But. Disqus simultaneously reports "we haven't nailed down what's causing the notification issues." So I'm not getting any kind of guarantee that user settings are working for new comments and no one is going to get additional unsolicited email, even if they are mentioned using the @ function, if I reopen comments. Disqus will only say the notifications "appear to be strictly a result of a bug in the migration process" but nothing more certain.
Which is fine. I don't expect them to magically discern the answer. They're investigating. But, given those circumstances, re-opening comments is not a realistic or meaningful option from my perspective, since re-opening comments comes with a tacit promise that user settings are functional and no one will be getting any more unwanted emails.
And I can't make that promise, so re-opening comments is a risk I am not willing to take—and I'm honestly not sure why it's a risk Disqus recommends I take, or considers a viable option. It seems to me that both of us have an interest in making sure there are no more mistakes during this process.
I may be erring on the side of caution, but the thought of someone whose inbox has been deluged with Disqus notification spam getting even more makes me cringe even to contemplate.
And it is, of course, the most active members of the commentariat who have been most bothered by this notification clusterfuck, so I am sensitive to the fact that it's the people who most frequently comment, and are most likely to jump in and refer to commenting guidelines before a mod arrives, and generally help maintain the safe space, who are getting the blunt end of this mess.
Update 6: 3:20pm CT: No news. Have heard nothing from Disqus in two hours. I'm not posting that to make Disqus look bad; I'm posting it because it's honest, and I've gotten a bunch of emails from Shakers desperate to know what's going on, thanking me for posting regular updates, and asking me to keep providing them. I wish I had something else to report; I don't.
Update 7: 4:45pm CT: Disqus reports they have disabled mentions for Shakesville in order to run the test of the migration. Disabling mentions should disable notifications. However, if you start getting notification emails ("You were mentioned on Disqus") about old comments again, please let me know, and I will ask Disqus to pause the migration.
I haven't received any information about when the migration test will start or finish, but if and when I receive that info, I will pass it on.
Update 8: 5:20pm CT: Disqus estimates it will take "about 12 hours for the rest of the comments to finish migrating. So it should finish at approximately 3 am Pacific time," provided the migration goes smoothly and completes without any email spamming. Given a successful completion of the migration overnight, comments will be re-opened mid-morning CT tomorrow at the earliest, as I'll have to wait for confirmation when someone gets into Disqus' offices on the West Coast.
Daily Dose of Cute
Cutest whoops ever? Maybe.
The thing I love most about this picture, besides everything, is how the little edges of her grin are just barely visible. She is too cute.
Primarily Dreadful
Well, that picture was about all the funny I could muster this morning. So here's the news, without my usual abundance of snarky commentary.
"Oh noes how will I live without your witty repartee?!"—Everyone on the entire planet, I'm sure.
CBS: Axelrod: Romney "Oblivious" to Everyday Life. Yes, yes he is. I'm glad to see the Obama campaign is taking this line of attack against Romney. 1. It's true. 2. It's obvious. 3. It's not a problem that can be easily fixed—although if the Romney campaign sold tickets to an informational session where Mitt's handlers tried to get him up to speed on how average USians live, I would definitely buy one, just to see the look on Mitt's face when they get to the "some people have zero cars and zero elevators" flashcard.
Think Progress: Santorum Claims California Universities Don’t Teach American History. And he would definitely know, because he is a tenured professor of Smartoloy at Genius University.
ABC News: Ann Romney Says Campaign Will 'Unzip' the Real Mitt. That is literally what she said. Insert all of the jokes here. ALL OF THEM.
USA Today: Poll: Santorum Leads in Pennsylvania Amid Signs of Change. Hope and change, or just change? What kind of change? The kind that makes people want to vote for Rick Santorum? Whoooooooops! That is not the change we're looking for. #jedishit
The Hill: Romney Struggles to Put Santorum Away. That headline means, naturally, that Mitt Romney is struggling to win decisively enough to make Rick Santorum drop out of the race, but I am nonetheless picturing Mitt Romney struggling to make Rick Santorum stay in a giant cupboard labeled "Garbage Nightmares." Romney keeps pushing Santorum in and trying to close the door, but Santorum keeps wriggling out one limb and then pushing it back open again. It's kind of like when I try to keep the cats and dogs out of the bathroom when I want to take a shit in peace for a change.
Washington Post: Romney Confronted Over Mormon Doctrines. He was asked if he believed his religion's teaching that interracial marriage is wrong. He "replied to his question with a terse 'No.' Later, Romney said that he would talk only about the practices of his faith, not its doctrines." Somehow I think that rule's going to last precisely as long as until the next time someone asks him about posthumous baptisms.
Today in Anti-Choice Terrorism
[Content Note: Anti-choice terrorism.]
There are a lot of things that don't get called terrorism in this country, but chief among them is the anti-choice movement, which is the most brazen, unapologetic terrorist campaign in the US, its co-ordination and orchestration done right out in the open, where no one in the media or politics will call it what it is. It is an inherently violent ideology, backed by a decades-long campaign of intimidation, harassment and violence directed at abortion providers and abortion seekers, that is ignored by one party and mainstreamed as a central plank of its party platform by the other.
And still, every goddamn episode of blatant terrorism against women's clinics is treated like an isolated fucking incident.
Last night, an explosive device went off at a Planned Parenthood facility in Grand Chute, Wisconsin.
Grand Chute police are investigating an explosive device that blew up at Planned Parenthood. It happened about 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Planned Parenthood office at 3800 North Gillett Street. The explosion started a fire that quickly burned itself out. The fire and explosion caused a small amount of damage to the building.Fortunately, there have been no reports of injuries.
Note the headline at the linked piece: "Explosive device found at Planned Parenthood." Found. Well, yes, I suppose one way of describing a bomb going off is to say that a bomb was "found."
Again I wonder how long this campaign of domestic terrorism against women and other people with uteri has to go on before our president will say something about it. It would be nice if he would say something before any more people get killed.
[Via Chloe.]
Primarily Awful
Hoping to bolster his image as an Everyman, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney posed under some giant chandeliers in Wisconsin this weekend.
The biggest news today is that pretty much everyone (except for Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul) have agreed that Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee, including the Democrats. President Obama's two most powerful surrogates—Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton—took swings at Romney this weekend.
Biden said with hilarious understatement that Romney is "a little out of touch," then added, "I can't remember a presidential candidate in the recent past who seems not to understand...what ordinary middle class people are thinking about and are concerned about." LOL IT'S SO TRUE!
Clinton went after Romney's other major weakness, his flip-flopping etchasketchery: "The problem that Governor Romney has, is his character attack was 'You don't really know what he believes. He did this, he says that.' [Romney has to] convince the swing voters that he'll be moderate enough and open enough and inclusive enough to be an effective president, and effective on the economy. And hope that the Republican base voters say, 'Well, okay, so he maybe wasn't as right-wing as he claimed to be in the primary. Still more conservative than President Obama. I guess I'll vote for him anyway and I won't stay home.' That's a much harder job. So I doubt if he can do it. But it's going to be interesting to watch." LOL ALSO TRUE!
There are two things that President Obama has that Mitt Romney does not have: 1. A modicum of integrity; 2. Awesome surrogates.
Biden is a jackass and Clinton's a lech, but both of them are wickedly smart and can be devastatingly witty and are capable of delivering withering blows to a political opponent all the live long day.
In his corner, Romney's got a bunch of useless dinguses whose rhetorical armory is stocked with demonstrable lies, racism, and "Obama's a socialist poopyhead!" Good luck, gentlemen! (And probably token lady.) YOU WILL NEED IT!
Speaking of President Obama winning, Gallup has him up 4 points on Romney among registered voters nationwide. I know—it seems like it should be more like 40 points, or 400 points which is a mathematical impossibility, but: 1. It's really quite amazing Obama's up at all as an incumbent with the state of the economy; and 2. We are nerdz who pay attention to primaries, unlike most of the rest of the country. Once people start listening to the words that come out of Mitt Romney's face, those numbers will change.
Also! The ladies are swinging toward Obama. Huh! I WONDER WHY THAT COULD BE?!
Insert clever segue here. You should definitely read this funny piece in the New York Times about Mitt Romney and how he is a colossal dipshit and will definitely lose.
I am not even going to dignify the increasingly pathetic campaigns of Gingrich, Paul, and Santorum with an expenditure of my time to google news about them. Here's the news all day every day: They stink. They're vile bigots with garbage policies. They've got no shot at the White House in this election or any election. Barf yawn fart. Hot off the presses.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Trayvon Martin Updates
Residents take part in a rally demanding justice for the killing of black teenager Trayvon Martin in Miami, Florida April 1, 2012. Thousands of protesters gathered in a downtown bayfront park on Sunday demanding the arrest of the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, in central Florida a month ago. [Reuters Pictures]Raw Story—Thousands of protesters attend rally in Sanford, Florida:
Thousands of protesters, including civil rights leaders, media figures, activists and ordinary citizens gathered on Saturday at a rally in Sanford, Florida, site of the February shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. According to MSNBC.com, the protest began on the campus of a local high school, wound through a predominantly black neighborhood, and ended at the Sanford Police Department, blocks away.There were demonstrations in other parts of the country, too. In Indiana: "Locked arm-in-arm, some with the hoods of their sweatshirts pulled over their heads or holding bags of Skittles, an estimated 200 people protested the slaying of Florida teen Trayvon Martin after services Sunday afternoon at Light of the World Christian Church. The peaceful demonstration resulted in the arrests of 13 people for obstructing vehicular traffic to the east of the church on Michigan Road, including the Rev. David Hampton, who commended Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers for doing their job as he was arrested."
Marchers included NAACP President Ben Jealous, Rev. Al Sharpton, now of MSNBC-TV, and Reverend Jesse Jackson. The rally was organized by the NAACP, with branches in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina organizing bus-loads of marchers who came as a show of solidarity and to demand an arrest of the man who admits to shooting Martin, George Zimmerman.
Protesters marched to gospel music and carried banners that said, "Justice for Trayvon."
"We want an arrest," they chanted, "Shot in the chest."
That really just gets right to the heart of the matter, doesn't it? The not-black man who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager is not under arrest, but the black reverend who "obstructed vehicular traffic" while protesting that injustice is.
In other news:
Orlando Sentinel—Trayvon Martin Shooting: It's Not George Zimmerman Crying for Help on 911 Recording, Two Experts Say: "Tom Owen, forensic consultant for Owen Forensic Services LLC and chair emeritus for the American Board of Recorded Evidence, used voice identification software to rule out Zimmerman. Another expert contacted by the Sentinel, utilizing different techniques, came to the same conclusion. Zimmerman claims self-defense in the shooting and told police he was the one screaming for help. But these experts say the evidence tells a different story."
ABC News—President Clinton Hopes Trayvon Martin Case Leads to Reappraisal of 'Stand Your Ground' Laws: "I hope this will lead to a reappraisal of the Stand Your Ground laws, and I hope that the truth will come out and that the tragedy of this young man's loss will not be in vain—it's just terrible. Whatever the facts were—all these people trying to jump on him and talking about some mistake he made in his life—that's irrelevant because [he was an] unarmed person who was killed on the street by a gun. And so I hope justice will be done in this case but I hope that the larger justice that would somehow redeem a portion of this terrible loss. The American people should re-examine their position on that and ask: Is this really worth it? Are we really all that much safer taking the chance that this kind of thing could happen over and over and over again?"
The Hill—House Dems Eye Policy Responses to Shooting Death of Trayvon Martin: "In the wake of the slaying of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, House Democrats are drafting legislation designed to prevent similar tragedies in the future. The lawmakers want to adopt tougher rules for neighborhood watch programs, eliminate certain state gun laws, rein in racial profiling and require an examination of racial disparities nationwide."
So far, only members of the Congressional Black Caucus have signed onto the legislation. One hopes that other members of Congress will support them.
Write to your representative here and encourage them to support the legislation being introduced in response to the killing of Trayvon Martin, or to thank them for leading the way.
Blog Note
Commenting will be closed for the weekend while we work on resolving the commenting issue. At some point(s), the blog may appear to be offline. I appreciate your patience, and my apologies for the inconvenience.
UPDATE: Please note that some comments threads appear to be open, but comments left in them during this process will be lost. I will let you know when commenting has been fully restored.
UPDATE 2: Well, I'm going to be blunt about this: Disqus, despite explicitly promising us weekend support to migrate comments and solve the international commenting problem, has failed to respond to a single email or tweet the entire weekend. The migration to the custom domain is not working, and we need their assistance, but we're not getting it. We're in a holding pattern until they decide to respond to our multiple requests for help. I am extremely frustrated and disappointed with this situation, and I apologize again for the inconvenience.
I hope commenting will be back online soon.
UPDATE 3: It looks like we're slowly getting there. However, I am aware that many of you are receiving unrequested emails notifying you when you were mentioned in a comment, and I am sorry for that. I have notified Disqus of the problem. I am truly embarrassed by the way this has been handled, and I hope that issue will get resolved soon as well.
UPDATE 4: 9:00am CT. I am still waiting for a confirmation from Disqus that the migration is complete and commenting is fully functional again. But, aside from the email late last night telling me "We will send you a message as soon as we have more information about what happened to your migration, and what we can do to finish it," they have again ceased communications.
I am disinclined to post new content until I have been assured everything is working and new threads will function properly, so I've got content sitting in the queue, but am still waiting on Disqus.
UPDATE 5: 11:00am CT. It has been 48 hours since we launched the migration. I still have received no support or communication from Disqus except for a single email and single tweet, both promising follow-up. There has been no follow-up.
UPDATE 6: 12:00pm CT. I have received an email from Disqus letting me know they're working on it and "hope to have a solution soon." I have requested frequent updates, which I will pass on, provided I get them.
I have also tried to respond to every email and tweet I've gotten from community members wondering what's going on. If I missed any, my apologies.
UPDATE 7: 1:00pm CT. I have no updates to share. My email requesting updates, sent more than an hour ago, has not been acknowledged.
UPDATE 8: 2:45pm CT. I have finally heard back from Disqus, who have told me that Shakesville's migration will have to be run again. Support is awaiting confirmation from Operations to get the go-ahead. I have requested an ETA on when the migration will be run again and an estimate on how long the migration will take once it begins, but have not yet received a response.
Additionally, I have been told that it's possible to publish new comment with open threads, but, in the same email, I was informed that the large number of Shakesville's comments is the cause of various problems. So I have sought confirmation that the migration will not be affected even if there is a deluge of comments in the new threads, as I don't want to end up delaying the migration even longer, and then hearing after the fact that I shouldn't have opened comments.
Again, my apologies for the delay, and I will keep you posted.
UPDATE 9: 4:00pm CT. I have received no further updates from Disqus. It has been more than an hour since I requested via email an ETA on the completion of the migration. I have received no response, not even a simple but honest "I don't know." The basic communication failure over the past three days is truly shocking.
As is the lack of accountability: In the last email I received, almost two hours ago now, I was told that part of the delay is because it's "necessary for us to appropriately time troubleshooting/restart of your migration" because of Shakesville's size. But:
1. I worked with Disqus Support over the last two weeks to trouble-shoot a test migration, and made it abundantly clear that the Shakesville migration was planned for this weekend, even securing the commitment from Disqus for weekend support, which was not honored. Never at any point did anyone from Disqus suggest to me that Shakesville's migration should be scheduled because of the blog's size.
2. Disqus' migration tool does not indicate that larger blogs should contact Disqus to schedule.
What pre-coordination did happen was at my initiative, because I wanted this to go smoothly. So to now get emails from Disqus implying that this extraordinary delay is somehow down to my failure to schedule with Disqus, or even down to the size of the blog, when I was coordinating with Support leading up to this migration, has made me very unhappy.
And I frankly want this community to know that I did everything I could to avoid exactly what's happening today. I know that many of you depend on this community for everything from news to escapism to moral support in times of crisis, and while I realize that it's mostly just an aggravation when we're offline, I also take seriously the value of the space, especially to its regular commenters. I am very sorry for the interruption in service.
UPDATE 10: 5:30pm CT. The latest update from Disqus: "It may be another couple hours before this delay clears up and we can take a look at your migration. The engineer working on it feels confident he can fix it once he is able to start running it again. As for how long it will take, it's hard to say, but we will try to get a more concrete estimate from our engineering team once the migration starts."
So, two hours after requesting an ETA, I am being told it will be another couple hours before they can give me one. I don't even know what else to say at this point.
UPDATE 11: 7:00pm CT. About an hour ago, I received an estimate of 6-12 hours for the migration to be complete. I asked for the following clarification: "Is that estimate 6-12 hours from now, or 6-12 hours from when the migration is restarted? If the latter, when do you anticipate it will be restarted?" I have not received a response.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: Girl on Fire. lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Photo of the Day
Restore America's Promise to go to Ikea and get some affordable decorative elements.
Scratch That
The desk in my office, at which I spend most of my waking hours, is about 15 years old, and it has, in that decade and a half, accumulated lots of scratches. Some of them appeared after moves—the desk had a home in at least three different flats before this house—but most of them are the result of living in a home with cats who love to sprawl on the desktop, and often resist when I try to shove them off.
I feel about the scratches the way I feel about my wrinkles: I am fond of them, and regard them as evidence of a life well-lived.
But I have one favorite scratch—or, rather a pair. They are parallel marks, no doubt from parallel toes, left at the edge of the desk on either side of a natural dark spot in the grain of the wood:
When I look at it, I see a person with hir arms thrown up into the air in a joyful and excited gesture. Considering the perpendicular scratch right at "shoulder" height, I suppose it could easily look like a drowning figure, but all I see is a glass half-full, so to speak.
It's hard to spend long feeling stuck, or helpless, or despairing, when every time one glances down, one sees a little figure reliably cheering with enthusiastic encouragement. I'll take it where I can get it!
Thank you, Desk Denizen!
It's no Jesus in a potato chip, but then few things are.
Quote of the Day
"We don't know how this will go. But it's hard not to feel a sense of foreboding—and to worry that the nation's already badly damaged faith in the Supreme Court's ability to stand above politics is about to take another severe hit."—Paul Krugman, in a must-read column about the Supreme Court's hearings and upcoming decision about the Affordable Care Act.
Visa and MasterCard Warn Customers of Security Breach
The breach potentially affects millions of customers and "the type of data that was compromised meant that the information could be used to create counterfeit cards." It's a good time to be extra vigilant about monitoring your account(s), if you've got a Visa and/or MasterCard, and immediately report anything suspicious to the issuing entity.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelly Belly
Dudz
Sophs, aka Monitor Cat
Livsy
Tils: "I ain't looking out no window. Fuck all y'all."
(She really rarely looks out any window. She will very occasionally look out the front screen door, and once in a blue moon will look out the window on my desk, but mostly she is utterly uninterested in the outside world. Given the opportunity to venture out onto the screened-in deck, she might. Or she might not. Haughty sniff.)
This is incredible.
It is astounding that 66% of white respondents can be so willfully ignorant and/or cruelly antipathetic that they would agree with that statement.
Jamelle Bouie:
For 66 percent of white Americans to agree with this statement—"Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors"—there needs to be either large scale amnesia or willful ignorance about what happened in the previous 150 years of this country's history.Or don't fucking care. Bouie's got another chart showing 51% of white respondents agreeing with the statement: "It's really just a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites."
In case you don't know, it's straightforward. After the Civil War, when African Americans were freed after more than two hundred years of bondage and chattel slavery, whites in the South—with, eventually, the complicity of whites nationwide—engaged in a brutal campaign of violence and economic deprivation against the descendants of said slaves, the result of which was to keep most blacks in a state of near-peonage, where their opportunities for social and economic advancement were extremely limited.
Not to discount the prejudice faced by many immigrant groups, but I'm reasonably sure that this wasn't the case for anyone other than African Americans. Which, I should add, is the reason why we have affirmative action and other such programs—the effects of this state-sanctioned mistreatment were so strong and so pervasive, that they continue to have an enduring effect on the lives and livelihoods of black Americans (in the aggregate).
But, it seems, most white Americans don't know that.
Blink.
"The problem is that black people don't know how to use their bootstraps!"—A majority of white USians, in the year two thousand and fucking twelve.
And while this attitude is indeed racist, is it not a singular result of racism: White USians (particularly, though not exclusively and not universally) subscribe fully and uncritically to the narrative of bootstraps and the promise of the American Dream and the myth of opportunity. Anyone (except oneself, naturally) who fails to achieve, including other whites who had the terrible sense to be born poor, with disabilities, to abusive parents, and/or in some other potentially success trajectory-fucking circumstance, is personally blamed for their lot and—even in spite of obvious innate incompatibilities with the unjust, inflexible, kyriarchal, privilege-rewarding system by which we're meant to achieve "success" as if it's a level playing field—is suspected, and frequently openly accused, of simply failing to work hard enough.
If there is one person born to poverty, one person with disabilities, one person who has survived profound abuse, who can be held up as an example of achievement, then everyone else is failing to thrive. Even as we devour barfinating narratives of triumph over tragic circumstances, we pretend that terrible beginnings don't really matter, except insomuch as they make great first acts for Sandra Bullock Oscar vehicles.
This intractable belief in bootstraps manifests the racism starkly represented above because it encourages the lie that history doesn't matter. And neither does present bias. It encourages the lie that every life happens in a fucking void.
Except, of course, when it suits us to judge an individual by our prejudices about an entire class to which they belong.
When you're a non-privileged person, you're as bad as the worst conceivable member of a shared demographic, and only as good as your own personal achievement.
That is the gross underbelly of American Individualism. Its story only really works for privileged people, among whose privileges include being seen as an individual, whether they fail or succeed.
And that is why the American Dream, and all its narratives of bootstraps and hard work and equal opportunity, is conservative horseshit: The American Dream is not, and has never been, that we collectively eradicate poverty, achieve meaningful and lasting social justice, and celebrate our shared success, but that each of us as individuals would achieve some sort of perfect destiny of wealth, health, and security.
And fuck everyone who doesn't. They're just lazy.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by owls.
Recommended Reading:
Eesha: Rep. Gwen Moore on VAWA, Shares Experience of Sexual Assault
Ana: Deconstruction: Misogyny Masquerading as Misandry [Relevant content note at link.]
FMF News: First-Ever Abortion Study in Rwanda
Cara: Arrested at Hospital for Demanding Medical Care, Woman Dies in Jail Cell [Relevant content note at link.]
Damali: What Race Is Your Dog?
M. Dru: Wisconsin Anti-Transgender Law Stuck Down
Michelle: Lesson Seven: Finding Fullness [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of food and eating.]
Andy: SNL Hires First Openly Gay Female Cast Member
Deeky: Tweet of the Day
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
BushQuotes!
Chapter 1, page 13: "As I started my second term as Governor, I was struggling with the decision about whether to seek the Presidency, worried about what that decision would mean for my family and my own life."
The country, not so much.
[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]
Number of the Day
$3.9 billion: The salary of the highest-earning hedge fund manager last year.
The highest earning hedge fund manager of 2011 essentially won the equivalent of seven of the current $540 million Mega Million jackpots last year.Priorities! We've got them! We should definitely continue to let children go to bed at night with empty bellies and keep paying gamblers in expensive suits obscene amounts of money that is taxed at lower rates than hungry children's parents! GOOD JOB, USA!
Bridgewater Associates' Ray Dalio's reward for his bets on where the markets were heading: $3.9 billion, according to AR's list of the top-earning hedge fund managers.
The top 25 hedge fund managers took home an average of $576 million each.
And that was a down year.
Last year's total compensation for the top 25 hedge fund managers dropped 35% ... to $22 billion.
[Via @PeterDaou.]
